Let’s talk about peace over dinner: A cultural experience on memory, dislocation and the politics of belonging in Cyprus.

Abstract

On Saturday 9 April 2011, Greek Cypriot artist Lia Lapithi invited a group of eighteen guests to join her for her own version of the Last Supper, a four-course dinner that took place in the warehouse of an old furniture factory in Nicosia, Cyprus. The dinner was the first project of a series of orchestrated meals that Lapithi hosted and participated, where the theme was hospitality and politics in Cyprus. Significant to Lapithi’s work are autobiographical experiences and the geo-political division of Cyprus. Born in 1963 in Cyprus, Lapithi experienced at a young age the traumatic 1974 division of Cyprus and the on-going occupation of half of the island by Turkey.